The Trade Desk heads into the post-earnings week facing a rare convergence of analyst capitulation and structurally elevated short interest — a setup that leaves the stock with few near-term catalysts to lean on.
The earnings reaction on May 8 was swift and damaging. Shares closed at $23.08, down nearly 5% on the week, and the analyst community responded with an unusual show of collective discipline: ten firms moved their price targets lower within 24 hours of results. William Blair and Keybanc went further, cutting their ratings outright — Blair moving to Market Perform, Keybanc to Sector Weight — while Truist slashed its target from $50 to $35. Benchmark trimmed from $40 to $30. The direction of travel is unmistakable: even bulls are recalibrating, not defending. The mean price target now sits at roughly $27, close to where the stock was trading just weeks ago; with shares at $23, the implied upside looks more like damage control than conviction.
Short interest tells an even more pointed story. Bears have been rebuilding aggressively since early April, when SI was running at roughly 12.5% of the free float. By late April it crossed 16%, and the latest reading sits at 17.4% — a jump of nearly 38% over the past month. That is a meaningful short position, though the borrow market itself remains uncrowded: cost to borrow is just 0.35%, down 14% on the week, and availability is wide, meaning there is no immediate squeeze pressure from the lending side. The short-score registered 54.2 on May 7, well below the kinds of readings that historically accompany acute squeeze risk. Bears are not paying for their conviction — which suggests the position could persist without forcing an unwind.
Options positioning has edged toward the cautious side without being extreme. The put/call ratio closed at 0.57 on May 8, roughly 1.9 standard deviations above its 20-day average of 0.52. That is elevated relative to recent history, though still far below the 52-week high of 0.93 — options traders are hedging, not panicking.
The bear case circling the stock is specific. The dispute with Publicis over terms and fees is the sharpest near-term concern, compounded by alleged misconduct probes involving WPP and Dentsu. Founder and CEO Jeff Green's dual-class share structure concentrates control in a way that limits external pressure, and a recent CFO transition adds management uncertainty at precisely the wrong moment. Against that, the bull case rests on TTD's dominant position in programmatic advertising and the long-term structural shift of dollars from linear TV into connected TV and open internet. The 12-month forward EPS growth trajectory ranks in the 95th percentile — the fundamentals have not broken, but they have not been enough to hold off near-term multiple compression, with the P/E still running above 10x despite this year's de-rating.
State Street notably added over 14 million shares as of April 30, making it the most active institutional mover among top holders. CEO Jeff Green's open-market purchases in March — around $148 million across four days at prices between $23 and $25 — are worth noting as context. Those buys were made at prices close to where the stock trades today, which at least signals that the founder's personal conviction has been tested at current levels before.
The key variable to monitor is whether agency relationships — particularly the Publicis dispute — reach any resolution, and whether guidance on the May earnings call offered enough clarity to stop the steady drift higher in short positioning. With borrow cheap and availability ample, there is little mechanical friction preventing further short accumulation from here.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open TTD on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
